PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT ASSESSMENT

Pediatric is a branch of medicine that deals with the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents. Most of the pediatric patients are young children, and because of the physiological and emotional differences that exist between adults and children, pediatricians undergo specialized training. This training equips them with skills and techniques that enable them to meet the health needs of these young patients effectively.

Apart from body size differences that exist between pediatric and older patients, many other factors come into play. Many of the pediatric patients are still physically developing while this is taking place; pediatricians are supposed to give special attention while caring for them. Therefore this brings on the relationship between pediatric patients and young children who are still undergoing development. Thus pediatric medication is associated with stages and care of the young developing people.

At each stage of development, young children learn in several areas at the same time. Mostly by six years of age, most children can provide reasonably accurate medical information. Thus it gives this age bracket an advantage of being used for study because it contains young people who are the most active. They are also ready to venture into discoveries about the world.

Development Assessment

Assessment is how we observe young children learn, thrive and understand it then, later on, we put our understanding to better use. One of the primary methods used in the assessment is observation. Some of the reasons as to why we observe are to develop further our understanding of how these children learn and then try to link theory with practice. There are various ways of approaching the assessment of children. Professionally, there are four primary methods of carrying out a physical assessment. They are inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation.

Inspection involves careful investigation of the body system using vision, smell and hearing to access normal conditions and deviation. Palpation requires one to touch the patient with different parts of his hands with varying degrees of applied pressure. Percussion on the side involves tenderness, and it’s commonly used to access adult sinuses. The last but not the least is by auscultation method. It is a method that consists of listening to various parts which include the lungs as well as the bowel sounds with a stethoscope.

From Piaget’s theory, some of the characteristics exhibited at this stage can help a technician assess. According to Piaget’s theory, some of the traits displayed  in this age bracket include

1. Children starting to think logically about concrete events
2. They begin to understand the concept of conservation.

• Their thinking becomes more logical and organized but still very concrete

1. Children begin to use inductive logic or reasoning from specific information to a general principle.

From the above characteristics, one can be able to assess through observation. Through keen observation, one can be able to know and understand when the bodies of kids change.

Through the skills and techniques acquired by professionalism, the pediatric can be able to tell how the school-aged kids developmentally by interacting, sharing and engaging them with them. One of the ways of attracting the students is to involve them in doing what they like as well as listening to them. Ask them questions to get their feedback.

Some of the potential findings that are

obtained from this assessment include;

1. Young children can understand and actively build knowledge
2. The dependency of development is responsive to experience.
3. Mental health, cognitive and physical development are complementary and mutually supportive areas that require active attention in the preschool years.